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Hey reddit, I recently defended my PhD in soil science and microbial ecology at a top institute in the Netherlands and finding myself in a very bad situation afterwards. I already was aware that the research job market was going down the drain but was not prepared for how hard this was going to make things. Although my defense was quite recent, I have been actively looking for a job since May of 2025 with very little success. I have been looking for postdoc opportunities as well as industry roles and have gotten around 8 interviews since then whose distribution has been half industry half academia but so far I: - had 2 positions offered to me that were later retracted because project budget got axed. - had an open application go through two interview rounds only to get an email showering me with compliments but then telling me this will not be a match at this time without any specific reason. They then proceeded to ghost all my follow-up emails asking for a clarification. -had an interview go through two rounds only to have another candidate selected who had a niche skill they were looking for. These are just some of the highlights from the 8 interviews while the application process so far has involved 100s of applications, some extremely relevant ones even that never even got an interview round. In general throughout all the interviews minus just one, I have made it to the final round and lost the position to someone with more experience. After 9 months of basically getting nowhere I started running into financial issues and had to take a min wage job at a warehouse just to survive. How are you guys navigating this job market and dealing with this situation? Everyday I wake up I lose hope and just don't wanna do this anymore. I tried so freaking hard during my PhD only for this to end up being my "reward" for finishing on time and with four Q1 first author publication and one co-authored. I am afraid this will just become my permanent situation from now on and it stresses me to death. I know life doesn't guarantee you anything but to go from being successfull at a field I love to packing boxes in the span of half a year has really dropped my self esteem to new lows. Every job that I have attempted to apply to that sits in between this and my field had basically been an auto reject due to being overqualified (e g lab technician).